So'o Masks and Hemba Funerary Festival Author(S): Thomas D. Blakely and Pamela A. R. Blakely Source: African Arts, Vol. 21, No
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So'o Masks and Hemba Funerary Festival Author(s): Thomas D. Blakely and Pamela A. R. Blakely Source: African Arts, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Nov., 1987), pp. 30-86 Published by: UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3336497 Accessed: 29/09/2008 11:12 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jscasc. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to African Arts. http://www.jstor.org So'o Masks and Hemba Funerary Festival THOMASD. BLAKELY* PAMELAA. R. BLAKELY Rural Bahemba,1 who are primarily In recent years, leading scholars have called their system of visually com- agriculturalists living in eastern endeavored to enlarge our understand- municative events. This ethnographic Zaire just south of the great equatorial ing of African art by doing and encourag- approach puts a primary emphasis on rain forest and about 150 kilometers west ing field research in Africa concerning various forms of indigenous knowledge, of Lake Tanganyika, have in recent years the production, uses, and ethnoaesthe- and involves a rigorous effort not only to come to the attention of the African art tics of African art in its social and cultural find answers to questions from an out- world through their wood statuary, re- setting. Increasingly we see in print sider's perspective, but also to find the ferred to by the Belgian art historian kinds of contextualizing material on Af- appropriate questions to ask, and ap- Fran:ois Neyt as grande statuaire for its rican art that are comparable (and some- propriate ways to look and perceive and unusual size and relatively classical times even superior) to analyses of art interpret, within that particular African style. In the publications on Hemba from areas of the world that have much culture. There is a substantial literature sculpture to date, the Hemba so'o longer literate traditions to rely upon for in anthropology and related fields con- ("chimpanzee-human") mask has re- general background, for exploring spe- cerning methodologies for conducting ceived only cursory mention (Neyt & de cific historical and contemporaneous re- this general type of inquiry that are here Strycker 1975; Neyt 1977; see also ferents, and for suggesting sign do- extended and elaborated to deal I.M.N.Z. 1973a, 1973b; Cornet 1975). It mains3 in the surrounding culture that explicitly with visual sign processes, or sometimes is referred to as a masque are potentially related to the art in ques- "semiosis."4 singe, or "monkey mask." When the tion (e.g., Biebuyck 1973). An important question to ask when Kiswahili term sokomutu is also noted, Along with greater knowledge of Afri- considering the so'o mask is: What do the the translation gloss used (if any) is can peoples and their everyday and ritual Bahemba themselves make of it? What in "chimpanzee," without further com- lives has come a somewhat greater ex- these masks counts, for the people who ment on the connotations of this term for pertise in understanding the iconogra- produced and used them, as a sign or a Bahemba.2 The limited treatment has phy of African sculpture from more complex of signs, and how do Bahemba been misleading, moreover, in asserting cultural-insider points of view. More relate these signs to other signs of their that these masks are never danced (Neyt rarely, attempts have been made to expli- acquaintance, to situation-specific or 1977:498 following Cornet 1975:123). cate a sculpture's visual signs with spe- multisituational designata, and to the cific reference to postures, gestures, or habits of the beings, living and dead, who facial expressions found in face-to-face inhabit the world in and around their vil- interaction in the African society that lages? When Bahemba look at this object produced and utilized the particular (Fig. 1) they see what they call a horrible piece, as is done, for example, in Robert and terrifying "mouth": an enormous Farris Thompson and Joseph Cornet's and grotesque curvature, an inappropri- book The Four Moments of the Sun (1981), ately stretching, gaping opening on an which focuses on the Kongo ethnic otherwise fairly reasonable visage. If you groups in Lower Zaire and Angola. We as a Muhemba5 saw anything like this would like to take this approach a bit frightening combination of forms com- further here than has previously been ing out of the bush or on a path, in your done, to our knowledge, at least for panic you would not pause, but would sub-Saharan African processes of sig- run full blast in the opposite direction. nification, by examining the Hemba so'o We witnessed this kind of panic among a mask, its ethnoaesthetic dimensions, number of Bahemba attending a funeral. and its performance in Hemba funerary A reliable female research assistant also festivals. tells of seeing a usually very calm and A central concern of our visual semio- dignified thirty-year-old pregnant tic research (supported by other linguis- woman running headlong down the tic, historical, folkloristic, and sociocul- path essentially stark naked, her cloth tural investigations), as exemplified by wrap streaming out behind her (an the discussion of Hemba masks to fol- extraordinary event in the very modest low, has been to discover and elucidate everyday adult Hemba world): it turns which visual phenomena count as visual out she had seen a so'o "chimpanzee- communication forms, messages, acts, human." This wild-eyed flight is the an- 1. SO'O "CHIMPANZEE-HUMAN"MASK. HEMBA, ZAIRE. unhurried WOOD, 19.3cm. INSTITUTDES MUSEES NATIONAUXDU events, and texts for members of the tithesis of the calm, Hemba ZAIRE, KINSHASA. COLLECTED BY C. E. HENAULT. community under study. One objective gaze and all the forthrightly polite in- HOLES AROUND THE EDGE INDICATEIT WAS PROBABLY is to work toward making clear which teractional subtleties that accompany it. WORN AS A DANCE MASK. INTERVIEWSWITH BAHEMBA, visual communication resources are USING PHOTOGRAPHS OF THIS AND OTHER SO'O MASKS, WERE ONE SOURCE OF THE ETHNOAESTHETIC utilized by these Central African people 2. SO'O "CHIMPANZEE-HUMAN," SHOWING THE INFORMATIONIN THIS STUDY in constructing what might be loosely WOODEN MASK (MWISI GWA SO'O), BARKCLOTHCAPE, AND HAIRAND BEARD OF COLOBUS MONKEYHAIR. 30 AM Steady and unabashed gazing is a com- ing routines. This is not to say that one to it. Here again, it is a silent sign used in mon eye-contact routine, and though its cannot at all find in Hemba interaction the interests of interpersonal discretion. occurrence varies with respect to concur- the quick flash of the eyebrow that Raised eyebrows held for a longer time rent activities, who does the gazing, and Iranaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt and Wulf are associated by Bahemba with "wild- who and what are gazed upon in what Schiefenhovel propose as a biological ness," "drunken anger," some kinds of settings, it does not have the implica- universal in human facial expression, "craziness," or with "having just seen an tions of discourtesy found in Northern- but it does seem suppressed or shor- apparition." Bahemba see this longer- European American culture, for exam- tened in many Hemba situations.7 held kind of raised eyebrows in so'o ple. Gazing is expected in many Hemba Bahemba verbally deny using any eye- masks (Figs. 1-4)9 and view the so'o, in situations; omitting this gaze or cutting it brow movement in greetings, and their part, as embodying and expressing these short can easily have negative connota- brows do appear to be kept more stable disturbed and unsettled emotional tions, whereas calm and unhurried gaz- than in some other cultures. Their faces states. ing is interpreted as friendly and courte- at these times seem to be much farther Especially, however, Bahemba focus ous attentiveness. (For an analysis of this along the continuum toward where the upon the grotesque mouth and contrast and other semiotic and proxemic6 as- Japanese are, for example. it with what they otherwise see as a regu- pects of visual communication in Hemba Interestingly enough, Bahemba re- lar, well-proportioned face. It is typically villages, see T. Blakely 1982, 1987.) serve a slightly slower raising of the eye- noted that the carver did a fine job in Under persistent questioning, brow for the kind of named gesture that rendering this transformation of human Bahemba maintain that the wide curved Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen have facial signs - the features, expression, form on the so'o mask quite clearly de- called an "emblem" (Ekman & Friesen and facial gestures - except that the notes for them just a "mouth," an "open 1969).